AGI Development: Important Highlights from Tesla's Former AI Chief

Andrej Karpathy, former Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) Director of Artificial Intelligence and a co-founder of OpenAI, stated that artificial general intelligence (AGI) has yet to reach the anticipated advancements.

In a statement made on the Dwarkesh Podcast in October, Karpathy said, "We are currently in an intermediate phase. The models are great, but they need more work." He expressed that rapidly developing large language models have raised expectations, stating, "Overall, the models are not ready. I think the industry has made a huge leap, and they are trying to claim it’s enormous, but that’s not the case."

Karpathy emphasized that systems promoted by some companies as "AI agents" that write code, search the web, or perform office tasks are not truly autonomous. He explained that these systems lack reliability and genuine understanding.

This view contrasts with that of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt in September, Altman expressed that he would find it very surprising if the world had "models with extraordinary capabilities" by 2030.

In the podcast, he also mentioned that AGI still faces challenges in structured reasoning, long-term memory, and security. He noted that many demonstrations exhibit narrow capabilities rather than true general intelligence. "I’m not influenced by demos," Karpathy added, stating that regular demonstrations often do not reflect the complexities of the real world.

While characterizing his approach as "five to ten times more pessimistic" compared to current predictions, Karpathy mentioned that a decade can still be considered an encouraging timeframe. "Ten years should be quite an optimistic timeframe for AGI," he stated.

The differing timelines within the tech world highlight the division regarding the progress of artificial intelligence. Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated in a post on X last month that the company’s new model Grok 5 will be "something indistinguishable from AGI or AGI," emphasizing that the chance of achieving AGI has increased by 10%.

On the other hand, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella mentioned at GitHub Universe 2025 last month that "a new toolchain is emerging and is currently being born." He expressed that AI agents are transforming the way software is developed.

Karpathy, however, stated that current AI systems are far from general intelligence, saying, "We have some very early-stage agents... but I think there is much work to be done." Still, he highlighted his optimism that these challenges can be overcome, stating, "The problems can be solved, they are surmountable, but they are still challenging."